Online Parent Support Chat

4.4.08

James seems to be pushing the boundaries...

My wife and I came across your site in an attempt to find answers to our current difficulty with our son James.

Just to give you some background, we live in the UK in Shropshire in what you would term an affluent village. We are experiencing issues with our son James who will be 14 later this month. We have two other children a girl 10 and a boy of 4 and we live in a close community. James has been bullied by one lad since Junior school and currently at senior school. We went to the school recently and had meetings with the Head and the mother of this lad in a bid to sort things out. James now throws this back at us, saying we made things worse and that other pupils are winding him up. They wind him up as he threatened this bulley with a knife but this was just empty threats. We explained to him its not due to us meeting the head but due to his knife threat. he will not accept this at all and we are seen as the cause.

In terms of stature he is 5'9" strong and very outgoing, likes sport Cricket and football and is a very loved member of this family. His Grandad, whom he was very close to, died in late October but he has not shown any grief although was upset on the day. His grandmother my mother died in January, though he was not so close to her. The school believe he should do well in his SATs and further exams if he applies himself, but has not attempted to do any homework in the holidays and has SATs in May.

He seems to resent his sister at times, winding her up and it usually ends in anger sessions. He dotes on our 4 year old but has recently shown aggressive signs towards him also. Its as though he treats him like one of his school class mates. We treat all our children equally and don't do more for one than another.

We are in the middle of school holidays and he returns on Monday to school. We seem to be experiencing a pattern of bored and aggressive behaviour, slamming doors, he has told us he hates us, wonders why we live in this **** village as there is no one to play with of his age. We cannot talk to him as he shouts back in anger I wish I did not live here, I hate you, I wish you were dead and then wishes himself dead. He has an extreme rage which we all are on the end of including our 4 year old son. When we had the recent bullying, I got the GP involved and he was emphatic that there was not mental health concerns. Yesterday he took the grout out of some of the tiles in the bathroom, which seems to be to get attention.

The whole family are getting fed up with this aggressive and angry behaviour and when you attempt to ask how we can help, he tells us to shut up and leave him alone. He seems to go for a while without issue and then he starts to by winding his sister up and calling her fat, then my wife gets involved and it escalates culminating in the rage and slamming doors. We have told him this cannot go on and asked him what we can do to work through the issues.He will not communicate except in rage and says 'Then go on get rid of me, then I will be out of this **** villiage.' This lunchtime he could not find anything to his liking for lunch so accused us of not feeding him, slammed the freezer door and demanded I do something about it. I said with that attitude I will do nothing for you. I later relented and offered to take him out for lunch, he refused saying don't want lunch with you. We cannot seem to do right for doing wrong.

Its not all bad, we are working on another house project and James has been helping, tearing the paper off and plaster. He does a good job and we tell him so.

We read your site notes and yes we have used the usual gambits to no effect. In answer to:-

Does your child often:

* lose his temper * argue with adults * refuse to comply with rules and requests * deliberately annoy people * blame others for his mistakes and misbehavior

Yes to all the above..... Just of late we cannot seem to reason with him. I am awaiting a call from our GP to see what he suggests. he is particularly blaming Debbie and me for his mistakes and behaviour.

We are a caring and loving family and we cannot do right for doing wrong. He has now gone out walking round the villiage and will not return till late PM. He is no doubt looking for his friend who had very similar anger issues and James is aware that we believe this lad to be an unhelpful influence. James seems to be copying this lads behaviour traits of anger and verbal abuse. James seems to be pushing the boundaries of late, in part we believe down to this lads influence.